The latest agriculture news in Brazil is that they are more than just the world's biggest soy exporter, a title it seized from the U.S. in 2006, but Brazil also has the world's biggest farm trade surplus, $27.5 billion last year. (The U.S. surplus was $4.6 billion.) Clearly, agriculture plays an important role in Brazil’s overall economy and in easing the country’s balance-of-payments problems. However, agriculture is the riskiest of all professions, and farmers are facing increasing hardships.

By investing in research and development facilities in strategic locations throughout Brazil, the power of collaboration is helping to accelerate collaborative research efforts and bring genetics and traits to market faster and it is making agricultural news around the world. For example, one new research center will focus on winter nursery capabilities for corn and soybean breeding, drought tolerance and heat stress research, as well as local product development efforts.

State-of-the-art facilities like that center will be instrumental in bringing new hybrids to market faster and advancing research programs such as doubled haploid inbred development - an approach that accelerates product advancement, research assisted by molecular markers, and the development of hybrids specific to the ‘safrinha’ environment, among others, that help Brazilian farmers increase their productivity.

Open Science  applies the power of collaboration to transform today’s challenges into tomorrow’s solutions.